What’s the most expensive outfit you’ve ever worn?
Unless you’re very into high fashion, it can’t be worth
much more than what Dave Zhou is wearing: a Supreme
x Louis Vuitton parka (easily $10,000), Nike Air
Yeezy 2’s ($2,500 on a good day), and a BAPE hoodie
and designer jeans for good measure. If you were
to paper your body with $100 dollar bills—$18,400
or so—you’d barely have enough money to buy the
clothes off his back.

Zhou is manning a table of what he calls “his product”—stacks
of BAPE hoodies that, combined, must
be worth over $10,000—at Sneakergreet Boston.

Self-described as the “dopest sneaker event in Boston,” Sneakergreet descends upon a Holiday Inn in
east Somerville on Feb. 3rd. It promises a raffle—
the grand prize: $1,000 in a Supreme backpack—along
with a space for sneaker and streetwear enthusiasts
to buy, sell, and trade their (often high-priced) goods,
ranging from Yeezys and Jordans to Supreme hoodies
and Versace loafers.

Rick Ross and Migos blare from speakers as gangly
pre-teens and middle-aged fathers inspect one other’s
outfits, examine sneakers for defects, and haggle
over prices. A man wanders around peddling a pair of
Yeezy Powerphases. “$120, size 10,” he intones.

Yet beyond this bazaar of street culture and fashion,
Sneakergreet and its attendees offer a unique way
to discuss streetwear’s inherent contradiction: the
conflict between the creative spirit it preaches and the
avaricious, deeply consumerist attitude evident in its
price tags and many of its disciples.

***

Streetwear is ostensibly a fashion style, emerging
from the beaches of San Diego and Los Angeles, and
from the streets of New York and Shibuya; out of skater
and surfer culture, and out of hip-hop and basketball.
Those are only a few of its influences: Streetwear
has its origins in disparate places, whether that be
haute couture, Americana, or cyberpunk. This hybrid
forms what designer Virgil Abloh called in a 2017 interview
“a sort of camaraderie, a sort of collective, a
community” that extends past fashion—an art form
that embodies what it is to be “creative in limited
means.” A neon red long-sleeve hangs behind Abloh in
his interview. It reads “post-post modern.”

This interdisciplinary spirit is alive and well at
Sneakergreet: Past the tables lined with Yeezys, Jordans,
and price tags, several streetwear startups
are selling not just their branded apparel, but their
own brand ethos. Eli T. Mook describes his “lifestyle
brand” Hundo Life as embodying the “need to represent
yourself 100%, keep it real at all times.”

“We do more than clothes,” he says. “We do music,
we host events, we just building, man. That’s what
we’re here to do.”

For Haven Prescott Jr., streetwear aims to “bring
like-minded individuals together, whether that’s
[through] art, music, or fashion.” He cites a collaboration
between his brand, Syndicate, and an Italian olive
oil company—selling bottles of oil at $200 a pop—
as an example of the brand “unifying the culture.”
And what is this culture? “Streetwear culture, it
doesn’t matter what it is.” He smiles, and offers me a
business card.

***

From the least dismissive perspective, streetwear
can be seen as embodying an odd mix of irony and sincerity.
It’s relentless: Supreme releases t-shirts with
“Fuck You We Do What We Want” emblazoned on
the front; BAPE announces a new partnership with
Spongebob or the Minions; or Balenciaga releases a
Bernie Sanders-inspired “Berncore” collection, walking
models in $400-t-shirts across the runway. It’s all
a big joke and absolutely serious at the same time. It’s
infuriating.

If you buy into this artistic view of streetwear
as transgressive commentary, making Ezra Pound’s
modernist command to “make it new” into something
new itself, then maybe all of these staggeringly expensive
clothes and shoes are necessary evils. Maybe
that’s the point. Maybe.

But there’s another perspective: Prescott denounces
those who “want to run around wearing what everyone
else is wearing”—the people he dismisses as
“robots” and “hypebeasts”.

There’s certainly a vein of exhibitionism at Sneakergreet.
Alex J. Drinkwater is wearing a Supreme box
logo hoodie swimming in stars and stripes, along with
another pair of Nike Air Yeezys, worth only $1,000 or
so. He’s chosen his outfit simply to “flex on everyone
else,” he says, spreading his arms and smirking. He
unabashedly declares his favorite brands are “mainly
the hype [ones]—call me a hypebeast, whatever you
want, I don’t care. It is what it is.”

He’s there to “sell and collect,” and so is Dave
Zhou. He wants “to sell all [his] Bapes, try and make
some money,” he says. Someone interrupts to ask how
much the BAPE facemasks—flimsy cotton with sharktoothed
mouths printed on—go for. “$80. Cash,” he
says. These facemasks, along the iconic hoodies, he
bought by the suitcase-load in Japan for hungry
American consumers who will pay well above the
Japanese retail price.

Scott M. Smaller is another vendor at the event,
dwarfed by the selection of Gatorade-blue-tinted
Yeezy Boosts he’s selling. His toddler son sprawls next
to him, sporting infant-sized Yeezys and a confused
expression. Smaller has packed his table with Adidas
not because it’s his favorite brand, he says, but
because “that’s what other people’s favorite brand
is currently. That’s why I have it, so that I can make
some money.”

Funnily enough, even Abloh, champion of streetwear
as an art movement for our age, understands
that “all these words that I’m saying, you can take
these words and put them into a product.”

But who’s saying streetwear can only be one or
the other? Does its move to the mainstream, its constant
self-commodification necessarily compromise
its own artistic ambitions? To Edgar Arty, organizer
of Sneakergreet, the event should be “more than just
opening the doors and taking money and collecting
from the tables—I think there should be an entertainment
aspect to it.”

Abloh himself says streetwear is not “limited
or degraded by this youth obsession with a box logo
t-shirt.” Instead, he says, “It’s a way of thinking, [and]
there’s new roads to be made in that, and we’re at the
cusp of it. We’re only like five years deep.”

***

Krista L. Lawrence is one of many moms at Sneakergreet,
accompanying her two sons. She sits behind
their table, looking bewildered and resigned all at
once. It’s hard to hear her through the obscene Young
Thug lyrics emanating from the DJ’s booth. He keeps
interrupting to shout about Timberlands, while a
cluster of pre-teens vapes furtively in the far corner
of the room.

I have to ask: What does she think about all this?

She surveys the room. “I personally think it’s crazy,
but to each their own,” she says. Her smile is either
exasperated or patient, it’s hard to tell. “Other people
spend their money on jewelry or drugs—I’d rather
have my kids spending it on something they enjoy.”

I ask her 14-year old son, Kyle W. Lawrence, why
he collects sneakers.
“I—” He pauses, looks down at his customized Adidas
NMDs. “I honestly don’t know. I like it.”

— Magazine writer Alan R. Dai can be reached at alan.
dai@thecrimson.com. This is the second installment
of his fashion column, Live Fresh or Dai, in which
he travels around the city to various events that are,
however obliquely, fashion-related. Follow him on Twitter @dai_alan_dai.